Programs

Our programs prompt the sharing of vision, ideas and solutions among students, faculty and staff across thousands of campuses. Our motivation is to inspire a generation of collaborative leaders, scaling positive impact and powerful change.

Turning Green mobilizes youth to become active around issues that directly impact personal and environmental health. With resources, powerful online and offline programs, lifestyle and campus initiatives, as well as strong leadership and mentorship opportunities, we prompt transition from conventional to conscious living in collaboration with academic institutions, businesses, organizations, policy makers and global leaders.

PROJECT GREEN CHALLENGE

Project Green Challenge (PGC) features 30-days of environmentally themed challenges, providing students with mentorship, advocacy, and leadership skills. Through conscious living, informed consumption, and individual and collective action, PGC participants are challenged to sustain a healthy, just, and thriving planet. Since launching in 2011, this initiative has engaged over 25,000 students directly and tens of millions indirectly, on more than 1000 campuses in all 50 states and 45 countries. It runs from October 1-30, 2016. Sign up here.

CONSCIOUS COLLEGE ROAD TOUR

This unique, interactive, hands-on event prompts students to become informed about conscious living, mindful consumption, and inspires them to question, seek solutions and become effective at leading change. The Road Tour will visit 16-18 pre-selected campuses between March and May, 2017 to engage students in the transition from conventional to sustainable in their daily lives and on campuses.

CONSCIOUS KITCHEN

The Conscious Kitchen (TCK) is dedicated to a systemic transformation of school dining, the health and improved life outcomes of our children, local food systems that support ecological agriculture and fair wages, and to a thriving future for our planet. As the first organic/non-GMO school food program in the country, TCK partners with schools to shift the paradigm around food service, based on five foundational terms: fresh, local, organic, seasonal, non-GMO (FLOSN). These terms guide this groundbreaking program and define an unwavering commitment to the long term health of children, prioritizing ethically sourced and organically grown food. The Conscious Kitchen successfully breaks the cycle of unhealthy, pre-packaged, processed, heat and serve foods, transitioning to chef prepared meals made with scratch-cooked ingredients, purchased within USDA budgets and exceeding nutritional guidelines.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

About Turning Green

Today’s youth face an escalating epidemic of health and environmental challenges. Yet they are essential participants in reimagining and transforming their future. They have hope, imagination and spirit to build a sustainable future; the passion and powerto shift the marketplace, and the will to mobilize around tangible, impactful change. Most critically, they have the greatest stake in the outcomes.

By galvanizing a movement of young, informed consumers, we can shift the demand long term for healthy products and healthy food, while empowering our future leaders to be lifelong advocates for a healthy ecosystem.

At Turning Green, we work at the elementary, high school, and college levelto provide students with the education, advocacy skills and leadership opportunities to take action in support of a more responsible economy, a healthy food system, and mobilize others to do the same. We aim to:

Empower them to be advocates for change in their homes, schools and communities

Mobilize these future leaders, uniting them with diverse stakeholders and mentors

We are building a movement led by youth, advocating for healthy food, safer products, and ethical businesses. We amplify existing movements for environmental and social justice, catapulting these movements into the future. Turning Green provides every student an opportunity to better understand the choices they have, the impacts of those choices, and the tools to take action through our two flagship programs:

Conscious Campus

This program educates, engages and mobilizes students through a series of projects:

● The Campus Road Tour – To Educate: An annual tour of ~20 college campuses across the US where students examine the impact of, and alternatives to, their daily choices and habits. Each tour stop culminates in a Town Hall meeting where a sustainability initiative is launched on campus, with ongoing support from Turning Green. Impact: Over 2M students directly on 100+ campuses and tens of millions via social platforms

● Project Green Challenge (PGC) – To Engage: A month long competition that engages thousands of students across the globe through sustainability-themed challenges, covering topics from personal health, to food and product labeling, fair trade, waste and energy. The challenge culminates with a 4-day PGC Summit in the SF Bay Area for 16 outstanding students.

Reach: ~35,000 participants on 2500+ campuses in 45 countries and over 100M via social

● Turning Green Interns – To Lead:Year-round experiential learning opportunities that give students the knowledge, skills, and confidence to become powerful sustainability leaders on their campuses.

Impact: ~250 students each year taking on leadership roles on their campuses

Conscious Kitchen

This program works to shift the paradigm around food service in schools by cultivating a local, ecological food system and building nutrition literacy into school meals. Our staff works with schools and school districts to transition school food from pre-packaged, processed, heat-and-serve to chef-cooked meals, prepared in on-site, zero waste kitchens, based on five foundational attributes that we call FLOSN: Fresh, Local, Organic, Seasonal, Non-GMO.

Impact:First FLOSN school district in the U.S.; creating a replicable framework and blueprint for schools across the nation.

Through our work, we demonstrate that each individual can affect change: one voice, one student and one school at a time.